Money, power tip elections right or left

Saturday

Jun 30, 2012 at 6:00 AM

After the Ringling Brothers Circus, the elections in America are the biggest and most expensive show on Earth.

Try as you will, you cannot stage a bigger show than Election 2000. Republican candidate George Bush was stuck in the state of Florida with a governor named Jeb Bush, who just happened to be the candidate’s brother. Florida’s Legislature was neoconservative. “Democrat” was a swear word. The Cubans hated President Kennedy for not invading Cuba and starting World War III. We developed mysteriously malfunctioning voting machines, some of them showing up for the count months after the election.

The Florida secretary of state declared the end of the vote count. He retired after the election immensely rich. Did he sell out?

Four years later, Ohio decided the presidency. Evangelicals in Ohio with their megachurches ruled. SuperPAC bags of money were unloaded. Karl Rove made the deal. The electoral votes tumbled to the conservative side under the weight of dough. Secret and free election? Not there, not then.

Four years later, a junior senator is persuaded to run for the presidency, without money. Enter Oprah! Problem solved.

It is impossible to fault Russia’s Vladimir Putin for spiking election results when you know how ours are manipulated.